276 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



It is said when Diocletian and Maximum resigned the throne, Dio- 

 cletian amused himself by working in his garden and when Maximum 

 sought to draw him out of his retirement, he wrote : " If you could see 

 the cabbages I have planted with my own haijd, you would never ask 

 me to remount the throne." There has been a great improvement in 

 horticulture from that day down to the present; as man has improved, 

 God has made the plants and their ways similar to that of man; first 

 the i)lant breathes the same as man, the only difference it inhales nitro- 

 gen and exhales oxygen and man inhales oxygen and exhales 

 nitrogen; second, if a good plant of the same kind be placed with 

 a bad one, the pollen of the bad plant will affect that of the 

 good one, and make a plant which is not as good as it would have been, 

 but by placing two good ones together, the same changes will take 

 place, but it will form a new plant just as good — if not better, it will not 

 be any \vorse. The same with man, if a good boy be placed with a bad 

 boy to grow up to manhood, the good boy will take the bad boy's ways 

 seldom ever the bad boy takes the good boy's ways) and be a bad boy, 

 too; and third, trees are like men — the wide spreading oak and the old 

 apple tree represents the liberal and charitable man, its wide limbs af- 

 ford Q rest for each tired bird as it flits along, and the long slender pop- 

 lar with its limbs pointing straight up and down affording no place for 

 the tired bird to light upon nor no shade for man nor beast when scorch- 

 ed by the noonday sun, represents the stingy man who cares for no- 

 body but himself, just so he has his palaces to roam in, he cares nothing 

 for his poor brother who is dying with hunger and frozen with cold. 



Horticulture is as nice financially as it is to the palate. The sup- 

 posed gardens of the Hesperides were surrounded by a wall eighteen 

 fathoms high. The garden was inhabited by three stern sisters, the 

 Hesperides, and was guarded by a three-headed dragon which never 

 slept. Among the trees of this garden were golden apples. The elev- 

 enth labor of Hercules was to carry off the golden apples, which he did. 

 When I look on those golden apples, I would like to be Hercules. 



